Saturday, April 30, 2011

Semester Summary

Wait, what?

Let me tell you what it's like to be an art student (that is, a dedicated one, not one of those apathetic do-nothings). You start the fall semester super excited to see everyone, super excited for your new studio space, super excited for your new classes, and thinking you have lots of ideas. Two weeks in, you realize your ideas are inadequate, and you begin to question everything ever. Three weeks in you're incredibly stressed out about finishing projects. Four weeks and your teacher announces that you're halfway to midterms. Five weeks in and you've developed a dependency on your sketchbook. Six weeks and you're working on your midterm project. Seven weeks and you're ready to collapse, running on 2 hours of sleep. Eight weeks and you're a zombie, finishing midterms. Nine weeks and your liberal art teachers remind you about that big paper you have due in what feels like plenty of time. Ten weeks and you're super stressed out again. Eleven weeks and you have a countdown to the end of the semester. Twelve weeks and everyone's planning their finals. Thirteen weeks and you change your idea for your final. Fourteen weeks and you freak out about the amount of time you have left for finals and you change your idea again. Fifteen weeks and you don't sleep. Sixteen weeks and you just go non-stop.

Then there's this thing called hibernation. It's when you promise to visit your long-lost family that you never have time to communicate with. But you get home and realize you're nocturnal. It's 3am and your mother asks you why you're not asleep. Clearly she doesn't understand that at 3am you're just starting to create something epic with Shrinky Dink and a BeDazzler. At 8am she's wondering why you're still asleep. And at 9 am and later at lunchtime. Four weeks of this seem like plenty of time, not enough time, and too much time all at once. More or less, you end up wishing you could go back to your studio where all your "real" supplies are.

Then Spring Semester starts and you again have lists of ideas. And your classes are awesome. Week two you realize that none of your ideas will fit into any of your assignments ever. Week three and you're already super stressed. Week four and you're avoiding all-nighters like the plague. Week five and it dawns on you that you haven't slept normal amounts since high school. Week six and you're getting ready for midterms. Week seven and you're trying to figure out your spring break plans, and the rest of your life. Week eight and you show something for midterms. Week nine is spring break, which means time to work on your portfolio and applying for internships and sleeping if you're that fortunate. Week ten and your teachers start talking about finals. Week eleven and the phrase "Spring Show" makes people excited. Week twelve and "Spring Show" makes people cry. Week thirteen and you decide that you should reward yourself with a beer for each all-nighter pulled. Week fourteen and you realize that not only do you not have time for such "relaxing activities," but that you would also be an alcoholic. Week fifteen and you realize that finals are next week. Week sixteen and you somehow still have work, even after finishing finals, like cleaning out your studios. And then it stops.

That's it, it just stops. Technically, the next week is BFA week, where you see the thesis projects the seniors worked on all year. Which means, if you're a senior, you're crying non-stop. Or so I hear. And imagine. But for the rest of us, we have all this junk we've lugged home from the studio occupying all the floor space of our rooms, and that's just discouraging. And we don't know what to do besides clean, which we really don't want to do. And when you finally clean (maybe I'll do that next week...), then you're really out of things to do. There's thoughts of making "art for fun," that doesn't always plan out to the scale you have in your head. And the next thing you know, your summer's over, and all you have to show for it is twelve sketchbook pages and an animated tea party.

One day, I will develop a healthy sleep schedule. But not until a year and a week from now. And maybe a while after that. You see, there's this thing called Grad School I've been thinking about...

These are a few of the photos I've accumulated thanks to an overloaded schedule, an incomparable work ethic, and a ridiculously short attention span. Oh, and a Mac. I think it does a nice job of summing up my semester. But I'll talk more about specifics later.